Atmosphere (11 page)

Martin nodded then Frank interjected, "Hector?"

He looked at Frank.

"If I can make a suggestion..." He waited for Hector's approval, which he received with a weak nod. "It seems too coincidental that Gross, Farrell, and Hilton had such similar records. Perhaps an inquiry should be made as to whether any similarities existed amongst the missing kids?

Hector nodded an agreement. "Can't hurt. Phillip?"

"Can't hurt."

"Very well then. Frank, come." He paced away then stopped and turned. "Oh, and Phillip?"

Martin turned from his computer screen. "Captain?"

"Nicely done."

"Thank you, Captain."

Rodriguez pulled Frank aside. "I think I'd like to get that interview done with Racine's parents tonight. If we can confirm a prior association with him and Gross, we'll get a warrant to search his apartment in no time. Then maybe we can find out what the hell is going on here."

Frank stood silent, arms folded in front of him, waiting like a child next in line to receive a prize.

"Yes?"

"Don't mess with me, Hect."

"You have a statement to give."

Frank stood mute. No chance for Hector.

"Isn't there something else you'd rather be doing than this crap?"

Half of him wanted to say yes. The other half said, "No."

"I hope I don't regret this. C'mon." Hector walked to his office where Detective Ernie Barba awaited inside. "Before I change my mind."

Frank smiled. "Crap? C'mon Hect, you could do better than that." He then tapped Hector tenderly upon the shoulder and squeezed in front of him into his office.

J
ewels of sweat dappled Jaimie's brow as she circled the final answer on the last page of her Climatology exam. Was it something about the formation of thunderstorms? Or electro-thermo activity perhaps? She could not recall for sure now that the exam lay folded closed on the desk in front of her. As a matter of fact, even though she
knew
she just completed the exam, she couldn't remember actually
taking
it, much less how she decided upon the answers circled within its shuttered pages. The past two hours seemed as if she had functioned solely on auto-pilot, her means of automation working independently from her cognitive functioning.

She remembered times in the past when she experienced a similar sensation, borrowing her father's car and driving out to Long Island to spend some time with her friends at Jones Beach. A quasi-hypnotic state seemed to shroud her state of awareness as she rode along Ocean Parkway, her mind signaling a physical response from her body only upon her arrival at the exit for the beach.

Similarly, she felt as if the last two hours had been spent in hypno-flight, that she had just taken the entire Climatology exam that she'd studied two weeks for under some trance-like spell, not actually remembering a single question posed to her, or how she determined the answers. Scary.

Perhaps if she had not sustained the run-in with the homeless man on the subway, or born witness to the strange exchange with techno-boy and the bald guy, her mind would not have been distracted in any way, and she might have gone into the exam with all her acumen in tact. But it had not turned out that way, and as a result she suffered a mental blow that seemingly sucked away a good part of her concentration, leaving her train of thought directed towards an infatuation with the strange experience.

Taking a deep breath, Jaimie shouldered her backpack, rose from her seat and walked to the front of the lecture hall where Dr. Lougeay sat reading a textbook. He looked up only briefly as she placed her exam atop the growing stack on the table in front of him.

She felt a surge of relief wash over her as she finally turned and walked away, her exam finished and handed in. It felt wonderful to be rid of the anxiety that came with the mountain of stress all those hours of studying had wrought upon her. Now all she had to do was wait and see what grade she prompted upon herself, and pray it wouldn't be too bad.

Her footsteps carried her slowly back through the lecture hall. Glancing about in a semi-dreamlike state, she noticed that approximately one-third of the students still pored over their answers, most presumably doubling back on responses left blank or guessed at for lack of a definitive answer. Before reaching the exits at the rear, she stopped and looked to see if any of the remaining students carried looks of indecisiveness upon their faces, as hers most certainly had. Misery loves company.

Instead she saw something else, something even more so unexpected than her sudden desire to stop in the middle of the lecture hall, and it made her freeze with fear.

One particular test-taker, a male, was staring at her. Or so she fathomed, as he wore dark, impenetrable sunglasses.

He was completely bald.

Jaimie felt a burning sensation in her gut, a bubbling acid of alarm rising from deep within her bowels as she tried to calculate whether this was the same person as the man on the subway train. Had he followed her for some sick, insane reason? Dear God, she prayed not.

She took a tentative step forward, legs wobbling as she returned his gaze. Quickly his countenance registered in her tired mind and she could see that
this
bald man's features were different from the last: the nose bigger, body stouter, lips fuller. And his clothes were different too. Although donned entirely in black like the man on the subway, this stranger wore pants instead of jeans, and no leather jacket.

Different person.

But so damned frighteningly similar.

Then she caught sight of something else, something so bizarre that it scared her for
real
this time, and she gripped her gut in vain attempt to curb those out-of-control acids burning a hole in her stomach. Truly, she was unable to tear her sights away from the strange picture before her.

Still staring directly at her—or so it seemed—the student had a pencil gripped in his right fist, fingers wrapped tightly around it. He was haphazardly running it back and forth across the surface of the exam booklet on his desk, creating a dark blotchy layering of lead that virtually covered the entire front page like a glossy paint.

He grinned, viciously wide, seemingly in response to the tremble in Jaimie's bottom lip.

Like the man on the subway.
 

She found the strength to tear her feet from the carpeted floor and headed for the exits, feeling two vicious eyes boring holes in her back. Before finally escaping through the doors, she willed herself to spin her sights back one last time, to convince her burdened mind that the eerie image was indeed real and not drummed up within her imagination. The student was still there, newly shorn head reflecting shinily within the dusty neon lamps—just as she had seen him seconds earlier.

However, to her surprise—and relief as well—his stare had not followed her. Instead, he remained in the same seated position, camouflaged eyes watching the spot she just vacated. Apparently he
wasn't
looking at her.

So then who was he staring at?

Following the straightforwardness of his gaze, Jaimie quickly searched the point of his observance and beheld a familiar sight.

Another male student sat amidst a circle of empty seats, pinned by the glimpse of the bald student. A freshman by the young looks of him, his exam lay folded neatly on the desk in front of him. He wore a sweater, jeans, and had a pair of walkman headphones wrapped around his neck. Undoubtedly mindless to his surroundings, he returned the catatonic gaze, eyes glossed with moisture.

Shivering at the familiar, yet unusually eerie sight, Jaimie finally fled the confines of the lecture hall.

A wash of neon fell upon her eyes, the brighter lights from above temporarily blinding her. Squinting, she hurriedly paced down the oval-shaped hall, around the corner to a small student lounge area where she had plans to meet Tracy Shueler and Barbara Hall. Arriving there, she leaned against the back of a chair, breathing heavily, watching over her shoulder just in case...

A hand gripped her elbow from her blind side.

Jaimie leaped, yanking her arm away with a gasp. She spun, backpedaling.

"Whoa," Tracy said, raising her hands in a defensive posture. The black sweater she wore hung upon her skinny frame like a loose curtain on a rod. "You a little tensed-up today?"

Jaimie relaxed her shoulders, clearing her face of a wave of hair that escaped her scrunchie. She loosed her knapsack, placed it on the orange vinyl couch next to them, and sat on the armrest. "You scared the shit outta me," she said, blowing out a lungful of air.

Tracy smiled, however weakly, placing the black canvas bookbag she carried next to Jaimie's knapsack on the couch. A tear in the tough fabric separated them. "Didn't mean to set a fire under your feet," she offered, laughing lightly, seemingly unsure if Jaimie would shrug it off.

"Hey guys."

Jaimie looked up and saw Barbara Hall approaching. She wore a pair of worn jeans not unlike the ones Jaimie had on, and a green turtleneck. Her long blonde hair sent spiral curls wriggling down her shoulders like a cluster of tentacles. She threw herself on the couch behind Jaimie, arms stretched out as if she had just crossed the finish line in a marathon. "I just spent the last two hours in Behavioral Psych watching Tom Parello's muscles bulge beneath his shirt. I'll never learn a damn thing if he continues to show up for class."

"I thought you had the hots for Dom Celso, the guy from Humanities II?"

"Oh, I still do."

"So who's gonna win the trophy, Dom or Tom?" Tracy asked, smiling.

"Both if I can help it."

"And some other guido she hasn't met yet," Jaimie threw in.

Giggling, Tracy stepped around Jaimie, sat next to Barbara on the couch. The vinyl squeaked beneath her jeans. "Not to fear...Babs'll keep us up to date with all the Italian scuttlebutt. No dark-haired beauty's ever gonna get by without us getting a report, right?"

Barbara said, "Speaking of hair, some guy in my Psych class—he was actually kinda cute..."

Tracy rolled her eyes and Jaimie smiled.

"...but he went and shaved his head. Bald and shiny like a cue ball."

The smile left Jaimie's face and she leaned forward. "Barbara, you serious?" Suddenly a part of the conversation, she wanted to hear more.

Barbara smirked and twisted her head slightly, raising an eyebrow. "Yeah...why? You know something about him?"

"No...I..." She placed a hand on her forehead, instantly embarrassed with her outburst. "I'm sorry, I'm feeling a little spent from the exam," she said, seeking an excuse for her impetuousness. Being spooked by today's events, for reasons she tried to convince herself were unsubstantiated, she felt she'd be better off not mentioning anything about it in effort to distract herself from what was probably nothing at all.

"You're not bailing out on us tonight, are you? Happy hour at Danford's Jame! Men everywhere!"

She smiled. It would do some good to get out as she had planned. Her day had taken a turn for the worse. She probably needed a few drinks, a few laughs. That
 
would certainly steer her towards a more enjoyable evening.

"No, of course not," she said, forcing a smile. "I've been looking forward to this all week."

The girls stood up, stretched, all of them smoothing out their clothes at the same time.

"Shall we?" Tracy asked, grabbing her bag and leading the way, Barbara and Jaimie in her footsteps.

"By the way, how'd you do on your test?" Barbara asked.

"I'm not sure," Jaimie answered, wanting so badly to ask Barbara if the bald guy in
her
class wore sunglasses. Instead she glanced behind her, watching students come and go from within the doors lining the hallway of the oval lecture hall, keeping a wary look-out for the appearance of bald men.

"N
ice neighborhood," Detective Ernie Barba said.

Frank and Barba unlatched their seatbelts as Hector skillfully parked the squad car alongside a fire hydrant between a black Acura and a green Accord, near the corner of 57th and Park Avenue—just down the street from the house where the Racine's lived.

The neighborhood, on the upper east side, undoubtedly bragged residents whom were upper echelon types. Doctors, lawyers, celebrities, none of whom made less than a half-million a year. All big shots who shelled out the bucks to live in three-story private luxury houses with grandiose architecture, fireplaces, and no less than three bathrooms.

"Where do you live, Ernie?" Frank asked as he slid out of the car, his small-talk sincere towards the young cop.

Barba got out from the rear passenger side, shut the door and stepped around the back to catch up with the senior officers. "My wife and I just bought a home on Long Island. Melville. Used to live in Forest Hills, but the apartment building got a little cramped when we had our daughter."

Frank remembered when he and Diane had bought their first home, also on Long Island, in Plainview. They ended up lasting about three years there, the two of them sharing the long list of duties that came along with owning a house. Yardwork, cleaning, shopping, carpooling, maintenance, the list was endless. And although the two of them had sufficiently fulfilled their responsibilities, Diane's efforts were begrudgingly done in haste. Soon her complaints escalated unrelentingly, she tiring of the housework and the food shopping and the commute to her job in Manhattan. Eventually, after months of pleading, she insisted they move into the city.